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Thursday, February 21, 2019
Food Assistance. California. February 2019
February 2019. FEMA. “Tips to Prepare a Successful Symposium Submission For the 2019 EM Higher Education Symposium”
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FEMA National Training
& Education System
Higher Education Program
Presents
“Tips to Prepare a
Successful Symposium Submission
For the 2019 EM Higher
Education Symposium”
February 19,
2019
3:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. ET
The 21st Anniversary of the Annual Emergency Management Higher
Education Symposium will be hosted June 3-6, 2019. The call for submission is
open now through March 15, 2019. This year we are looking forward to
highlighting the best our community has to offer in the following tracks:
- Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in Emergency Management
- Research Methodology & Integration
- Policy & Administration of EM and Related Programs
The submission form has been revised to better understand your work. The
hope is that this change will assist in preparing you to develop a
post-symposium document for publication to support the development, dialogue
and dissemination of information and material resulting from the symposium.
The webinar is designed to guide submitters to successfully navigate the
form, learn more about the tracks, and develop a submission that will be clear
and attractive to the reviewers. An overview of the cover letter, step-by-step
guidance to complete the form, discussion the presentation options, and
exemplars of submissions will be shared. There will also be time to engage in
dialogue to provide your feedback, as well as to ask specific questions about
your potential proposal.
Presenters:
- Academic
members of the Symposium Planning Special Interest Group
- Wendy
Walsh, Higher Education Program Manager
Conference Call-In: 1-800-320-4330, PIN:
376368
For additional information: Contact Wendy Walsh, EMI Higher Education PM- wendy.walsh@fema.dhs.gov
Webinar Training Bulletin FINAL.pdfTuesday, February 19, 2019
Free online course introduces a critical topic in the humanitarian and development sector. February 2019
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Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Homelessness. Emergency Crisis. When JAIL becomes a homeless shelter.
Jails are at the local level in town, cities, and counties. Must be monitored for corruption, human trafficking, slave\inmate labor for commercial purposes, and other abuses.
Consider abuses and inmate labor following the U.S. Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow laws.
BEMA International
A dorm room in the West Wing of the King County Jail, which is being converted into a homeless shelter. King County, Washington
Consider abuses and inmate labor following the U.S. Civil War, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow laws.
BEMA International
When a Jail Becomes a Homeless Shelter
A dorm room in the West Wing of the King County Jail, which is being converted into a homeless shelter. King County, Washington
King County, Washington’s plan stoked concerns about the link between homelessness and incarceration. Local leaders say they have a moral obligation to do what they can.
In recent years, King County, Washington, has been converting unused government buildings into housing for its growing homeless population. It set up a family shelter in a health center, for example, and built cottages at a warehouse. But the latest conversion is more unorthodox: Seattle will soon shelter at least 100 members of its homeless population in the West Wing of the county jail.
The plan fits into the broader efforts by the city and county to address their homelessness crisis. Today, more than three years after Seattle declared a state of emergency, over 11,600 people are experiencing homelessness there, comprising the third largest homeless population of any U.S. city. The county jail is one of at least eight unused government buildings or land sites to be used as a shelter or resource center, and while many homeless advocates and experts agree that it’s not a systemic solution, it is a bold and perhaps extremely overdue approach to handling some of the most urgent effects of this crisis.
“It doesn’t make sense to leave these sorts of facilities idle in the face of a described crisis that we have in our region,” said Mark Ellerbrook, director of King County Housing and Community Development.
But opening a wing of the jail to those experiencing homelessness has come with its own set of obstacles, and has raised concerns about the moral and ethical implications of bringing together two parts of the community that are already too often linked.
The county is on track to open the facility in early 2019. In November, the council approved $2 million to convert the facility into a shelter, and $4 million to cover operating costs for the next two years. Located in downtown Seattle, it is expected to operate for at least two years as a 24/7 shelter for adults, and provide case management, housing navigation, and meals for residents.
“If I have the opportunity to ensure a warm, safe place for even one additional person, I have a moral obligation to act, and I will,” said King County Executive Dow Constantine in an October press release announcing the transformation of the jail.
Until 2012, the West Wing of the King County Correctional Facility had been used to house minimum-security inmates. Although there are no individual cells, there are bars on the windows and an opaque film that make it impossible to see out. The building has showers, but they are in a large room, so there’s no privacy. And although it has a separate entrance from the surrounding jail, the door is centrally controlled, so visitors need to be buzzed in and out.
Ellerbrook said the county has been looking to modify all of these things for logistical purposes—residents will be free to come and go in the shelter, so a centrally controlled door won’t work—and to make it feel less like a detention center.
But no matter how many panes of glass or partitions are put in, this facility won’t be able to get rid of the very real fact that it was used as a detention facility and remains part of a jail. Even as an effort to mitigate a desperate problem, a symbolic link between homelessness and incarceration echoes a troubling reality.
In the U.S., about 15 percent of incarcerated individuals were homeless right before entering a detention facility. As much as half of the people who are homeless have a criminal history, and often those offenses are non-violent and related to being homeless, like trespassing and public camping. The startling links have become so apparent that some have taken to characterizing the U.S. penal system as the nation’s largest homeless shelter.
“This is a really, really charged image of placing people who are experiencing homelessness in a facility that is part of this haunting optic,” says Sara Rankin, director of Seattle University’s Homeless Rights Advocacy Project, which conducts research and analysis on homelessness.
There is also some concern about who the jail shelter will be able to serve. Alison Eisinger, executive director of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, said although shelter in government buildings is a positive step, by putting it in a jail, King County could be cutting down on the groups of people—especially the most vulnerable groups—that will feel comfortable living there.
Ellerbrook said county officials have made an effort to listen to homeless advocates and address their concerns, and have acknowledged that this is not the ideal location for a shelter. But they have also spent years looking at available, county-owned facilities and “what we have left, quite frankly, is this facility,” he said.
Seattle’s homeless numbers have also reached such concerning levels that there is no doubt once this facility is up and running, it will fill up. Until a comprehensive solution to the crisis is found and implemented, perhaps that is the most important fact right now.
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Homelessness. Emergency Crisis requiring emergency management. Feb 2019.
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/02/how-houston-has-virtually-ended-homelessness-among-veterans/582241/#nws=mcnewsletter
How Houston Has Virtually Ended Homelessness Among Veterans
Inside an abandoned warehouse on the northern end of downtown Houston is an encampment where approximately 20 homeless people stay each year. The ground is covered with cardboard, old newspapers, and plastic bottles of water coated in grime. On one wall, a mural reads: “Look for the Beauty Within the Most Frightening.” At the moment, there’s no one here.
The people who live in this “community,” as retired Houston Police Sergeant Steve Wick describes it, have been asked to clear out for the occasional hazmat sweep of the area, which he says can cost up to $60,000 each time. They’ve done two such sweeps in the past year, and the last one was a multi-day effort to remove accumulated debris.
“You have people that are sleeping on the same ground they’re going to the bathroom on,” Wick says, noting that it’s a major health risk, especially for fecal-born illnesses like hepatitis.
Wick, who led the homeless outreach team for the Houston Police Department until his retirement in January of 2019, would pass out water bottles every week as he made rounds through each of Houston’s three major homeless encampments and visit another half-dozen popular bridges or intersections where homeless people congregate. His goal was to convince as many as possible to connect with some of Houston’s social services and seek permanent housing, or possibly mental-health or drug addiction treatment.
Houston, which is held up as a model of success in finding permanent housing for homeless veterans, has in many ways an ideal team of people working to find solutions for the chronically homeless: an engaged police unit, a seasoned group of social and policy workers, and a city looking to innovate and improve. But finding homes for non-veterans who are chronically homeless involves more challenges, and the city’s homeless leaders are looking for creative ways to find solutions through collaboration and reducing bureaucratic hurdles.
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In 2015, three cabinet secretaries—of labor, housing and urban development, and veterans affairs—came to Houston for a celebration. The fourth-largest city in the country had reached an unprecedented achievement: Houston had found homes for 3,650 veterans in just three years.
The coordinated efforts stemmed from a Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) training in Florida in 2011, where heads of the Houston and Harris County housing authorities, directors of city and county housing development departments, the regional unit of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and those in Houston who were locally funded to do veterans work, sat together at one table to talk about Houston and Harris County’s homelessness problem. The group that came out of that training, Housing Houston’s Heroes, started off with a modest goal: to find permanent homes for 100 veterans in 100 days.
They mapped out how many different steps a veteran would have to take to get into permanent housing and found that the process required over 150 different steps, from securing a photo ID and birth certificate to filling out nearly identical paperwork for the housing authority and the VA—the sort of bureaucratic obstacles that can be daunting for anyone, even the most organized professionals.
“We got it down to 50 to 60 steps,” says Eva Thibaudeau-Graczyk, vice president of programs for the Houston Coalition for the Homeless. The process of streamlining these steps included changing the documents required by the local housing authority to include alternate forms of ID, and having the VA and housing authority share paperwork.
“We started to learn the power of navigation, and take [homeless veterans] one-on-one through each step of the process,” Thibaudeau-Graczyk says. “We’d drive them, wait with them, visit properties with them too.”
They also began organizing housing events through the Houston Housing Authority, whereby landlords could directly connect with people who needed homes, while staff would be on hand to process paperwork, background checks, and housing assistance.
In 2011, Houston had 8,538 people experiencing homelessness on a single night; by 2015, 3,652 of those people—the homeless veterans—had found homes. Once the city had established such high success metrics in solving homelessness among veterans—a press releasedeclared an “effective end” to veterans’ homelessness in Houston—the coalition turned its focus to chronic homelessness.
But in the years that followed, even with improvements, the same accountability and streamlining efforts haven’t worked as well with the non-veteran population.
For one thing, homeless veterans benefit from more federal funding and increased public support.
“In non-veteran homelessness, the only federal agency that has money to do anything is HUD, and it’s a small amount of the overall budget,” Thibaudeau-Graczyk says. “When you pair HUD money with VA money for veterans, you can create a system that is on steroids.”
Wick, who worked with homeless populations from 1994 through 2018, first as a bicycle officer and then as the leader of the homeless outreach team, says that solving homelessness is not as simple as just connecting someone with the right caseworker or apartment. It requires support from social services, long after the apartment keys have been handed over. This is especially true when it comes to finding shelter for the chronically homeless—people with four or more episodes of homelessness within the past three years for a total of 12 months or longer, or one or more current consecutive years of homelessness.
Wick tells the story of Felicia, a woman with a traumatic brain injury, mental-health impairments, and incontinence, who spent years between the street, hospitals, and jail. Wick followed her progress through this broken cycle and realized she needed a guardian who could manage her disability payment. He referred her to Harris County Guardianship, where, after an investigation and capacity assessment, she was given a guardian, who found her a personal care home. Felicia went back to the street again, but this time the guardian intervened, and Wick says that Felicia’s been off the street since early 2018.
But that effort took years of sustained, dedicated police work, and for a woman like Felicia, positive changes and stability are not always permanent.
“People who live on the streets are a community—they like hanging out with like-minded people,” Wick says. Without a support network, a sense of belonging, they often return to the street.
***
Houston Police Commander Bill Staney had always seen the homeless encampments under the IH-59 overpass in Houston during his 37 years as a police officer, but it wasn’t until he was assigned to the homeless outreach team that he went to look inside.
Now, once a week, Staney or someone from his team gives an update at the Houston Coalition for the Homeless meetings at the Beacon, Houston’s largest day shelter, which sits downtown, a few blocks from Minute Maid Park. Staney and his team have a list of names of the chronically homeless who need (and are willing to go to) permanent housing.
Those unwilling to move are allowed to stay in the encampment, as long as they follow certain rules that keep the place safe and livable. Houston’s encampment ordinance limits excess accumulation of property: Occupants of public areas are permitted one tent, a bike, durable medical equipment, and the equivalent of three cubic feet of belongings not considered infected or a health hazard.
In the 100-person meeting, caseworkers can check where their clients’ names are on the waiting list for permanent housing, and how long it will take, or what paperwork or forms of identification are needed. If there is a gap or a flag, someone from case management, Houston Coalition services, city police, or public transit police may be there to answer it.
The goal is that there are no hold-ups or missed emails or bureaucratic obstacles, so that anyone who wants to transition from chronic homelessness to permanent housing will have few if any delays in doing so.
Ana Rausch, senior research project manager for the Houston Coalition for the Homeless, says that people in Houston still see homeless people panhandling on the street or huddled in encampments, and may be largely unaware of all the work the coalition has done in finding permanent homes for over 15,000 people since 2012. But that still leaves 4,143 people sleeping on the street or in shelters, by Houston’s own count. (For comparison, 3,675 people sleep on the streets in New York City, a number that does not include the 60,000-plus homeless New Yorkers who sleep in shelters).
Wick acknowledges Houston’s success with ending homelessness among veterans, but sees that group as only a small subset of the homeless population. He’s skeptical of numbers that suggest Houston’s broader homeless efforts have been a success, calling the metrics of doing a homeless count “flawed at best.”
“By definition, homeless people are people without homes, so you don’t know where to find them,” Wick says. Describing the methodology behind the HUD counts, he says, “They give a section of the city to people who aren’t familiar with the city, they look for people. They see a man with a backpack, they count them as homeless. They see a vacant house, they assume there are homeless people in the house.”
Still, the collaborative partnerships within Houston are what convince Wick that progress is achievable. “Prior to this, we’d never had an outreach team. Police officers have certain tools in their tool belt to take care of problems; [the Houston homeless outreach team] is just another tool in that tool belt to take care of street habitation.”
But progress—or even incremental improvement—isn’t the same as a solution, and a solution doesn’t come from a press release announcing that one city has found a way to end homelessness. The complex nature of chronic homeless and the chaos that permeates the lives of people who live on the street—including those who prefer the community of street living over stable housing—mean that even the most well-intentioned programs and community support may not be sufficient to solve the individual problem.
“When you look at government dollars, there are very specific things and ways in which those dollars can be spent, and a high level of oversight on those, and rightly so,” Thibaudeau-Graczyk says. “The reality is that, in human lives, it’s a lot messier than that. You end up needing money for situations that aren’t in federal regulations.”
The problems that accompany chronic homelessness—broken families, addiction, illness, and poverty—may have overlapping causes and solutions, but each homeless case requires individual attention and work. It’s a time-intensive process without easy solutions, and the transient nature of a population with such unpredictable and rapidly changing circumstances means that it’s hard to generate concrete metrics, which many federal programs require to show success.
“Homelessness is a sign of a society that is in the process of breaking down,” Wick says. “By the time people hit the street, they are there for a reason.” The homeless people he’s looked after, Wick says, “have made a lot of poor life decisions—they have reasons that make it very hard for them to get off the street.”
Wick mentions one of his officers who spends his free time volunteering with disadvantaged youth, providing some stability in their lives.
“He is doing more to prevent future homelessness than most are,” Wick says. “Attacking it from this end, I don't think there is a whole lot you can do except one person at a time. See one person, tackle their issue, help the one person off the street.”
Even in a city like Houston, where a measure of successful work with homelessness has garnered national attention, the work continues, with no immediate end in sight.
Support for this article was provided by Rise Local, a project of the New America National Network.
This story originally appeared on Pacific Standard, an editorial partner site. Subscribe to the magazine in print and follow Pacific Standard on Twitter to support journalism in the public interest.